‘Make yourself redundant’

“This goal is not just for 2018, it is an approach I’ve taken in my professional life that I have always tried to apply. Whenever I take on a role I always try and look at how to shape an organisation, recruit, promote and manage talent well and ultimately figure out how to let the organisation continue on its mission without me. A good leader should be able to leave his or her role and things should continue to work smoothly with the right kind of culture, processes and working environment persisting”.

Ideally you will be able to go into an organisation, understand its context, drive change where needed and then hand over the reigns with confidence when the time is right”.

Outside of my professional life I am becoming far more conscious of the wider community and respectful of the challenges faced by many. I believe there is a big role that technology leaders can play to get involved with and help less advantaged people who don’t have access to the same tools or opportunities that we may have had.

The ability to communicate and share experiences to let parts of the community know what is possible and what the world could look like is something we should all be conscious of and try to influence.

People can have different lenses on life depending on their circumstances and sharing our world can open up their eyes to more possibilities.

Dhaya Sivakumar at a CIO forum in Auckland

Making sure we are looking out for everybody while we go through the digital revolution is really important.

Living in a part of Auckland where there are less fortunate people, it is easy to see how my children are okay, familiar with technology and optimistic about the future and thinking broadly outside of their local environment. But it's very easy for me to contrast this with others of the same age who are often scared of technology, unfamiliar due to access and limited in their opportunities.

Part of any leader’s role is to paint a picture of what the future is going to look like and then articulate what it means for the organisation and our part in it.

For a business, it might be talking about how experiences or customers journeys will change and we need to think about how we enable customers in this new world.

Guiding people, letting go of job descriptions and really helping people see a broader view is all part of good leadership. In a community context, I have often observed people limiting their thinking based on their environment and have started to get involved to help people to think beyond. Often, we can be constrained in our thinking and limit our opportunities to our local market or things we are familiar with.

Everyone should know that they have the potential to do great things and have access to a global market and have the potential to make a difference in people’s lives.

My thoughts are that there should be a standard, like a WOF (warrant of fitness) for security. This could be a standard set of questions that you can give to SMEs and say, have you covered off these things?

How can we address the fact that SMEs have a lack of investment to be able to take advantage of a digital economy?

These can be simple things like, if you have lost your main computer, do you have a secondary computer? Do you have an effective backup? Do you have malware protection? Do you know what to do in the event of a suspected cyber attack?

And then, using the responses we could target information packs tailored for each SME to address their needs.

We also need a specific initiative to help the SMEs from a digital standpoint.

We are going to continue to roll out the framework and education our staff on being security assets and enabling the digital transformation of our brands.

We have educated the senior leadership team on this focus and we have initiatives in place to ensure our largest cyber risks and digital threats are being managed. We have educated our executive to understand that digital disruption is where a third party enters a relationship that you have with a customer and provides them with value. This value is eroding your value proposition and is a threat to your relationship.

At TSG, we have reviewed our value net and have mitigated the chance of digital disruption through innovating our products and services.

If we can help them understand the threats and opportunities inside the company, they can take that up in their personal lives and help their family understand what those threats are and the opportunities for the future."

‘We don't want external players come to our market using a digital channel and actually take away revenues from New Zealand businesses.’

Copyright 2018 IDG Communications. ABN 14 001 592 650. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of IDG Communications is prohibited.